Localizing conditional clauses in the left periphery: evidence from multiple complementizer constructions in romance

Abstract

This article analyzes the distribution of conditional clauses in multiple complementizer constructions, showing that preposed adverbial clauses could occupy in early Italo-Romance varieties different specifier positions within the left periphery of embedded clauses, a possibility that has been lost with time in Italo-Romance but is still attested in modern Ibero-Romance. It is further argued that in multiple complementizer structures the highest complementizer invariably lexicalizes the head Force°, while the other occurrences of the complementizer mark the lower boundary of the main two Topic subfields.